Documentary film that tells the story of the
Tule Lake
concentration camp, with a focus on the post-segregation period, through interviews with former inmates, archival images, and scenes from contemporary
pilgrimages
.

Filmmaker Konrad Aderer uses footage from Tule Lake Pilgrimages to begin and end the film, introducing the themes of Tule Lake as part of the story of Japanese American resistance during the war years and how Tule Lake inmates lived with the stigma of "disloyalty" over the years. Interviewees—both newly conducted ones and older ones taken from Densho's Digital Repository—tell the story of the camp from the attack on Pearl Harbor and the roundup of West Coast Japanese Americans to their arrival at various concentration camps run by the
War Relocation Authority
. The heart of the film focuses on what happens after the so-called "
loyalty questionnaire
" and the subsequent segregation of the "disloyal" at Tule Lake. Former leaders at Tule Lake recall the unrest that began in a truck accident that killed an inmate in late 1943, the authoritarian rule of camp director Raymond Best, and the establishment of martial law and the notorious stockade. The film goes on to cover the establishment of the pro-Japan Hoshi Dan and the pressures that led to the mass renunciation of citizenship by almost 6,000 Nisei. Several of them recall their arrival at a desolate Japan and the efforts of the Tule Lake Defense Committee and lawyer
Wayne Collins
that led to most getting their American citizenship eventually restored. Scholars Barbara Takei, Tetsuden Kashima, Roger Daniels, and Sachiko Takita-Ishii provide the historical background to the story.

Aderer told Norm Masaji Ibuki that he "became engrossed in the story of Tule Lake Segregation Center" while he was making a prior documentary,
Enemy Alien
, about the arrest and incarceration of a Palestinian immigrant activist after 9/11 and the parallels with the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. "I knew I wanted to do a documentary about it the second I was finished with
Enemy Alien
." He attended the 2010 Tule Lake Pilgrimage, where he met may of the key historical figures he would interview for the film. "The more we learn about what happened at Tule Lake," he wrote on his Life or Liberty website, "the more it informs the vexing questions raised in the pervasive and unending war the U.S. now sustains, encompassing 'national security,' immigration, racial conflict and extremism."
[1]

Aderer's maternal grandparents were married at the
Tanforan Assembly Center
and subsequently incarcerated at
Topaz
, where his mother was born. Raised in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area, Aderer played a Nisei who ended up at Tule Lake in a high school production of Wakako Yamauchi's
12–1–A
.
[2]

The project was funded by a 2014 Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant of $109,961 as well as by the Center for Asian American Media, New York State Council on the Arts and others. Multiple versions of the film were produced, including a 79-minute theatrical version, an hour-long public television version, and a shorter version for classroom use.

Resistance at Tule Lake
was first screened (in a "pre-premiere screening") on May 22, 2016 at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose as part of the J-Town FilmFest. It screened in multiple festivals and community events in 2017.

For More Information

Learn more in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

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Teacher Guide

Learn more in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

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The Resource Guide to Media on the Japanese American Removal and Incarceration is a free project of Densho. Our mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy, and promote equal justice for all.